Saint Joseph's College Emergency Notification System

1
Saint Joseph's College Emergency Notification
System

• Gayle Langis, Director of Information Systems

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Who are we?

• Small, private, 4-year liberal arts college
  rural location 18 miles north of Portland
• 1100 students 80 from New England 10
  Northeast region remainder from other regions
  foreign students
• Distance Education online program with 3,000
  students
• Health care / Nursing education, business,
  communications, sports mgmt, etc.

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Why?

• Current plan outdated covered critical
  situations like weather events and fire, but did
  not meet new challenges such as
• Post-911 environment
• Pandemic Planning
• Virginia Tech shootings

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A national recommendation

• Made by the Report to the President On Issues
  Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy, it states
  the need for colleges and universities to
• Develop a clear communications plan and tools
  to communicate rapidly with students and parents
  to alert them when an emergency occurs. Utilize
  technology to improve notification,
  communications, and security systems.
• (p. 17) http//www.hhs.gov/vtreport.pdf

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Getting Started

• Committee Crisis Management Team though
  already working on the Pandemic Planning
  component, in the aftermath of the Va Tech
  shootings, there was a renewed urgency to update
  the plan, make recommendations, and once
  approved, implement key initiatives.
• Weekly meetings
• Prior plan and work reviewed
• Information gathered from industry studies and
  professionals vendors
• Information also gathered from peer colleges and
  local institutions what were they doing? What
  challenges had they encountered? And so forth

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Analysis of the Colleges currently available
options and capacity what were the challenges
and limitations?

• Voicemail students could be in classes, at
  meal, off-campus, etc. Majority use cell phones
  what about the classrooms? Athletic fields?
• E-mail announcements overuse has devalued them
• Chapel chimes could they be used for audible
  notification?
• Web portal how would anyone know to go there
  until alerted?
• 4 Ts (23 trunks each) 5 pots lines limited
  concurrent calls
• Internet pipe (up to 100mbps) in an emergency,
  performance could be reduced to a crawl

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• Early outcome of meetings was the recognition
  that the College needed better, more timely, and
  effective ways to communicate critical
  information to our students, faculty and staff.
  
• Using email voicemail only no longer enough.
• Key recommendation was to get an Emergency
  Notification System and to have it in place for
  the start of the fall semester.

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Summer Project Emergency Notification System

• Process used
• Contact peer colleges for their ideas and
  feedback
• Contact 3-4 vendors for information and
  comparison of features and cost
• Vendor demos
• Selection
• Implementation (1st 4 items easy implementation
  phase most difficult)

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Many questions

• Requirements?
• What would be needed? One system? Overlapping
  systems?
• What would the Colleges current infrastructure
  (and budget) support?
• What were the expectations / guidelines for
  urgent communications?
• How would the system be announced? Training?
• How would the data needed be gathered? Concerns
  about data privacy?

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Requirements of Emergency Notification System

• Multiple types of alerts text, voicemail, and
  tty
• Multiple options per person extension, home ,
  cell , email addresses.
• Speed of notification alerts within 10 minutes
  for urgent
• Ability to group and segment populations and
  locations
• Crisis Management Team alert 1st or
  concurrently
• Students, faculty, staff - immediately
• Parents after the initial notification
• Special Groups / summer events
• Ability to have time of year flexibility for
  special considerations
• Holiday Break, Spring Break, Summer students do
  NOT need to be notified staff do. What about
  faculty.
• Sports Camps, Distance Education students for
  summer residencies

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Requirements, cont.

• Ease of Use / managing user data (uploads /
  downloads)
• Proven track record
• Training and Support after purchase
• Redundant locations / servers in different
  geographic locations
• Vendor references stability viability
• Affordable

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Emergency Notification System Vendors

• Connect-Ed (higher education)
• Mutare Avaya solution
• Send Word Now
• Broad Blast
• per Voice Report, 36 vendors total

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Connect Ed

• Multiple groups and segmentation
• Parents kept in separate college (they
  probably dont want to know about college
  closures due to weather conditions)
• 6 options per person 2 phone numbers, 2 email
  address, and 2 parent s
• 20 different locations / servers
• Strong training and support
• Solid references in business since 2000
• Bowdoin already using Bates, Colby, UMF have
  since gone with them
• Affordable Annual cost 2,000 plus 2. per
  record. under 10k

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Implementation considerations

• Data how good is it? Current? (often not)
  Cell phone numbers collected? (not officially)
  How to maintain it
• How to get the data? Required? Opt-in?
• Will folks need training to use online form?
• Student cell phone numbers their concerns
• Developing a web form for College portal to
  gather the data
• Training key administrators
• Testing

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Announcing to College community

• Mandatory supervisors meeting to inform them
  before the big announcement
• Presidents Office release (email and annual
  breakfast)
• Fall orientation / opening activities for
  students
• Data collection period over half of faculty /
  staff / students in the first week
• Still wresting with mandatory vs. opt-in.
  Parents want mandatory / FERPA concerns employee
  data is mandatory
• In place!

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Questions????? Comments?

• PowerPoint Presentation available by request. My
  mail address is glangis_at_sjcme.edu
• Thank you